A world after dark
by SDoradus
Summary: The developers assert no canon exists. But only one ending allows for a future. Assume a paragon space-born war hero soldier, which implies no romance with squad mates, and my best guess at a canonical non-fantastic plot. Perhaps one with the possibility of children, though that turns out to be very restrictive. What happens after the end?
1. Broken Symmetry

A world after dark

_Trinity_

At the fifth shot Shepard began to see some instability in the raving torrent. His main impression was that the halt and lame movements of his shredded and bleeding frame seemed to smooth out as time slowed and the fall of shot settled on the flux gate.

This was visibly the end, yet he didn't seem to care. Odd. Like one of Williams' sappy bits of verse.

_We found her at last. What? The death eternal._

_This tide, gone with the day. _

Then the world was on fire and his last thought, however banal and inglorious, was _Mother -_

_From human care, collective impulse_

_Disengage, and steal away._

_Hannigan_

Other than closing the arms to stop another Reaper getting in, nothing went to plan. The fleet had done their best but the Citadel had been taken from them by the simple expedient of attaching Sovereign-class Reapers to the closed hull and waltzing it straight through the mass relay.

At that point, the military focused on preventing the residue of Cerberus, husks, marauders, and what have you from making their way down the wards, which had been under powerful attack, but held. Strangely, the Cerberus coup had helped. There were arms, men, C-Sec, _militias_, even repurposed Cerberus autocannon, an astonishing number of Turian military, mostly walking wounded but they would kill reepie-creepies if they had to _crawl_.

Tactus, for one, whose story was not clear to Hannigan but who carried himself like Garrus. She, he, and Chloe had combined on the crisis teams because he mysteriously had a source of civilian emergency _laevo_-rations and equipment. They carefully did not inquire where the old turian warrior had got them.

Two days ago, the cupola at the tip of the wards had closed, after the withdrawal of C-Sec from the Presidium. Tactus had become worried and puzzled by the little which could be seen of the planet below. LIDAR showed exceptionally low orbit, you could sometimes see scattered fires and city structures through cloud cover, not much else, they were night-side over rubble.

Is that bad? – Dr Michel had asked. "_Forced synchronous. Gotta be. We're not orbiting at all, we're hovering._" "_So?_" Muffled sounds of battle were filtering through the walls. Tactus turned and looked at the bright beam obscuring the view through the Presidium Ring. "_What happens when th__at__ anchor drops? __We have to have a Plan._"

Hannigan could only suggest getting to the control centre at the top of the Presidium tower. That was better than the fever dreams of some who still thought in terms of taking a taxicab ("_You'll be shot out of the sky_", said Tactus).

Bailey of C-Sec had considered something could be done, "... _but you would need council authentication._" He couldn't spare many men. She had thought for five seconds and said (some pangs of guilt there):

"Would old Spectre access codes work?" She'd filed those remote codes to the Illusive Man ... through EDI's cryptological escrow. (EDI, clever girl, never delivered them. If Cerberus wanted to work the Presidium controls they'd need a tame Councilor or Spectre).

_Soul on sentry-go, let's whisper our promise_

_From that night of the void and that day of fire._

_Tactus_

Tactus was uneasily aware that his comrades had hidden depths. It wasn't simply that the women were decorative (especially Hannigan) and smart (especially Michel), even by asari standards. Being cute isn't a hidden depth. But they were actually competent, despite having been, er, recommended as human liaison by people one did not ignore, like Vakarian or Bailey who seemed improbably well connected on both sides of the law.

Many like them filled aid posts after people vanished. Cerberus had hit, and suddenly there were vacancies to be filled. After obscure threats from mercs or Cerberus against humans _and_ aliens, all the asari, and at least one volus, had stopped coming to work.

"How old are these access codes, babe?" - asked Tactus, warily. Michel just gave the girl a knowing look, dammit. Michel had been fairly high-profile, the doctor with a murky past, but least he knew a little of her story. No-one knew anything about Hannigan.

These two stood out together. Something about the pair of them did not compute. They were thick as thieves, and angels with rocket-loaded wings hovered around their shoulders. Chloe Michel never lost her cool. Hannigan occasionally did. She stiffened up when certain people hove into view, like that fool from the Blue Suns. She had something to hide too, avoided any kind of limelight, which Michel did not.

Both of them had been on first-name terms with Vakarian and Bailey; between them all four had serious leverage with rations and supplies – which helped explain why their refugees worshiped them. That pissed the black-marketeers. When Vakarian and Bailey left on other business, Tactus and Michel faced serious death threats. Tactus had then seen Hannigan whispering urgently to that evil bastard Massani, which grabbed his attention by the fringe. The threats disappeared. So did the mob. As in, some of them weren't there anymore, and the rest weren't sayin' nuthin' to nobody. Dangerous profession.

"They date back a few months, for one set. I don't think Spectre codes expire, as such, they just ring bells which won't be heard right now. A few weeks for the other set, but these were, um, renewed recently with slack biometrics. That might get us beyond the embassies."

"Hm." Tactus had considered for a few seconds. "It's worth an expedition. Let's do it." - meaning platoon-strength infiltration.

Sneaking through enemy territory around the ring should have taken hours, but for some reason the heavy concentrations of enemy troops had gone elsewhere. Just as well; most of his troop had serious firepower and wouldn't trade big weapons for speed. Depressingly few of them were even in sight.

_Michel_

The ring had been remodeled, probably by keepers. There was an impossible number of corpses. Michel had stooped to examine a few. "These bodies are _old_. A couple of weeks, at least. Preserved somehow. There's saponification here too. What _is_ this?".

There were also structures now which had never existed before, full of dead husks, but Chloe knew her way around _this_ area. On nearing the base of the Presidium elevator, the arms opened, shattering C-Sec's front lines – not that the husks could outflank them. "What can this mean?" Then the Earth-anchoring beam flickered out. "Nothing good." – Tactus could be such a downer. Probably a Turian thing. My god, so many _ships_. And ... pieces of ships. _Reapers!_ "Keep going!"

Morale was briefly up. There were dead reapers falling to the dark planet below. Ships too, but there were far, far more ships than Reapers, and more arriving; the space around the open Citadel was relatively free.

Tactus jimmied open an elevator door. All three ventured inside. Michel stood on his shoulders and pushed open the access plate. After boosting Hannigan to the roof, both the women helped the Turian up. Moving up the shaft three hundred meters, they could break into the surface of the elevator bridge. There was a new scene of calamity, but with retention fields up, breathers could come off. Tactus was the first out, and the first to look around for the rest of the platoon. "_Spirits!_"

Tactus was visibly upset, which made Hannigan scramble. "What is it? What's wrong!" He just pointed. "What. Is. _That_." asked Tactus.

A tremendous great rod with a basketball head, like no ship any of them had ever seen, was knocking aside resistance as it made its way towards the opening base flaps, straight towards the Presidium ring. More precisely, the base of the Tower's central spire.

Michel was just as shocked as Tactus. But Hannigan ... she was giving that _thing _a long, considering look.

"I think ... I might not be supposed ..."

"_Hannigan_! Look around you!" Tactus waved in the general direction of Out There. Space was full of dead reapers. And other bits. Some of these monsters were kilometres long and already blazing through the atmosphere, couldn't be good for anyone below, hope they're plasma before they hit the ground. What did this mean for the Reapers? The Citadel?

"All right – " she began reluctantly

"Felicia. _No_." Michel took Hannigan's elbows and looked her in the eyes. "We don't know what's going on. What would he – would _Hackett_ want?"

Tactus' eyes narrowed. "You can't just drop that name and leave it there. _What do I need to know_?" Hannigan put her face in her hands.

Michel turned back to Tactus. "What she suspects ... Don't push it. Please. But I think ... this is an Alliance device. And that's all you need. Just how it works will be clear. But I think I know how she guesses it. Will that do?"

"That thing's about to rip the the Presidium off the hinges and – no wait, it's docking." It was, too. They watched, enthralled, as the head came to within metres of the tower base, which appeared to open – an answering beam joined with it; the docking point glowed, and something in the base glowed in response. Soon enough, a quivering continuous stream developed between them.

She shook her head. Tactus cleared his throat. "We still have to get to the tower."

"Yes. The arms' opening has stopped the ground beam. That monstrosity may interfere with the forced orbit."

"But Chloe, won't we just fly into space?"

"No. When a forced circular orbit fails, we'd be at periapsis of what will then be an elliptical orbit." Hannigan blinked; Michel sighed and changed mental gears. "We _will_ go flying off into space. But we'll come back to the same point, except there will be EM drag on a body this size from that planet's magnetic field, if it has one. It certainly has an atmosphere, you can see the hazy horizon. Every time the Citadel dips back near the atmosphere, there will be more drag. Sooner or later we're all doomed by whatever that is, Hackett's weapon or not. Time to go."

"Fine. But inside the elevator tunnels, please. I don't want to be near that beam. It has a lean and hungry look."

_Radio_

When the mother and father of all cataclysms hit, they were deeply embedded in keeper tunnels. Next thing, it was like the end of the world; all space glowed red around them. Ten minutes later, they emerged. Tactus picked up a Phalanx pistol from a corpse. God knew where he got the stamina to carry a rifle, pistol, _and_ a backpack.

The artificial gravity weakened. So did the atmosphere. "_Breathers_", directed Tactus. The girls hated this part. On the other hand it was getting light. Great piles of what Michel described as concrete rubble blocked the direct path up the spire. The raw material was known to be a sideritic iron. In other words the Citadel had been built from asteroid cores. That cladding had smashed, brittle fracture from impossibly high strain rates. Hannigan observed broken fragments with the sparkly gray texture of a broken cast iron frying pan. It cut your hands and other parts if you weren't careful.

EM spectrum back up now, chatter showing a minuscule portion of her flock was finding a haven on unidentifiable vessels. Thrusters glowed as diffuse lights in the fog, dust, and mist of disaster in a low-gravity environment. Michel had estimated as much as half of the ward areas might have survived, sheltering those who avoided processing husks. All right then. Something technological still lived. Her spirits rose a little. She looked around for an easier way up. There was gravity again.

Surely nothing electronic could have survived the initial EM pulse, let alone the peculiar red glow that expanded behind it – in fact, radio comm had paused. What they carried with them into the tunnels still worked, like her omnitool. Some shielded Citadel optical tech was still working. Portions of the wards still had mass effect fields confining breathable atmospheres.

The team stopped for a draught from the sippers; Michel cast a jaundiced eye at the rising day-side planet: "Is that looming closer?"

"No," Tactus said. "It's an optical illusion. The ring and ball give you perspective". Hannigan nodded at Michel. "Right. Like a full moon rising over the sea". Poor girl had been away too long and had difficulty recalling an orange moon on the horizon.

But this was forced optimism. Clearly, sparks of system life not withstanding, the Citadel was on borrowed time. It was around the size of the K-T dinosaur killer, although not traveling at forty kilometres a second. If EM drag decayed its orbit much more ... well, going from forced geosynchronous to atmosphere, the impact would merely boil the sea for, oh, a hundred kilometres around, say, the Azores, right _there_... oh dear ...

_Detection_

"There's an issue". Chloe pointed at the planet above the ring, and their gaze followed. "... Well? Right. We've been moved. So what?"

"Earth", said Chloe, in a flat, bitten-off sort of way. Hannigan shrieked briefly then covered her mouth and shrank into a corner.

They could still see the strange shattered spermatozoon hanging together by threads from the spire's base, two hundred meters off. Weird. Even in tatters, most of it vaporized, it was tremendous. Time to get rid of it. But they'd have to cross shards of broken cladding.

"Hannigan, up!"

"Leave her alone!". "No, this won't do. Tactus seethed:"We have to get moving. There's still the small matter of can we get that _fucking_ thing off the _fucking tower _ so we can maybe _close_ this station or at least _engage the bloody thrusters!_"

"It's OK, Chloe. Just give me a moment, please, Tactus. It was a shock."

The team had reached level sixteen elevator ledge, counting from the tower base. It was barely possible to see in orbital twilight, but she examined her bleeding hands. _Not worth expending medigel on this_. Taking textile strips – ripped bed sheets, looted from Chloe's bag – she bound her palms and wrists, looking back. Sluggards catching up now, looked to be near the elevator base. She waved.

Best path was around the spire's base, thought Tactus. The debris of the shattered presidium ring was still circulating in what amounted to free fall, except where artificial gravity still worked around active mass effect generators.

Floating reaper corpses had stopped twitching now, but those souls still on the Citadel remained in peril. _Look around. P__ay attention._ Where were the rest of the Reapers?

"The beam's gone. We can at least look". They moved on, through the elevator bridge and into the spire base. Hannigan now gripped the M11 Suppressor John had given her, more her size. Michel had a pack also, tiny, and her Gladstone bag, an affectation but it went everywhere with her in the camps and had saved more lives than she could count. Back they'd gone into the narrow warrens of keeperdom, trying not to be noticed. They couldn't see any reaper creatures. Were they all dead? Perhaps they could move openly, but there were a lot of human dead too.

"C-Sec and the militias were well organized. Nothing like this many deaths", said Tactus. "Where did all these human corpses come from? I've seen a couple of asari, but no turian at all, nor salarian."

Hannigan turned and gazed at the newly visible terminator line. "How long have we been back?"

"No more than sixteen days," said Michel. "Which, I note, is about enough time for Hackett to bring his fleets here."

Hannigan thought for a moment. "That's time enough to account for all the corpses. But I'm surprised they didn't have a processing plant like – what was reported of the Collectors." She shivered.

Traitor memories. Think about something else. Flashbacks had prompted her old boss, and it hurt to think of him, to insist – against protest – that she at least practice with a service pistol. Much heavier than her current "_popgun_". It was supposed to be therapy against a feeling of total helplessness. Okay, but it was painful – the recoil nearly broke her wrists – till the commander took her to a Spectre gun range.

His hands tenderly enfolding hers in the correct grip still shone in memory. As did the kiss on her neck. Totally destroyed her concentration. How was a girl to shoot straight? But that had been the point. Emphasize the _how_. Husks did not survive a headshot.

She felt better now. Michel was giving her an odd look. "Perhaps that was for later? They've been clearly very busy with a counterattack."

"Hm. Have you noticed there's no encryption static? Radio carrier's gone again."

Michel stopped, tilted her head to one side. "Good catch. Tactus, test your guns". He drew the Phalanx and ... "There's no laser sight. _Crap! _ The electronics are dead!"

"Pull the trigger. No, don't. We don't know what it will do. You'd have to kill the next husk with a stick. Good thing they're dead already."

Tactus grinned evilly, and unslung his rifle. "Ancient human Lancer M-7. The only electronics is in the sights. Doesn't use thermal clips. What about yours?" Hannigan passed the M11. Tactus examined it carefully. "And where did you get this?"

"Not telling. Why?"

"It's a hold-out weapon. Very highly modified human design. Expensive, because illegal, it's silenced. These things pass detectors, at least when disassembled. Don't depend on electro-optical tech. It might still work. Wait." He moved off a short distance, held out the gun, turned his face away, and fired. The slug ricocheted off the broken metal and plaster cladding, and shot into space. "Okay. Here. Always knew you came from the dark side, folks. You're too cute to be real." Turian grin.

Humans came in all sorts of shades. The bleached ones like these two, you could see traceries of blue arterial blood under the skin. Those pale cheeks turned bright red. Michel and Hannigan looked at each other. "Never said we didn't." Heh.

Feeling as though he'd just scored some sort of obscure point, Tactus stowed the Phalanx in the pack. Logically he should have dropped it, but it was hard for a turian soldier to abandon a weapon. Michel admired the way he moved on tiptoe, hypervigilant for husks. But there were none, only corpses, the strange waxy humans. "We've got to find a control kiosk."

"Why? It'll take days for orbital decay even with an elliptical orbit.." A long stare from the Turian. "Hannigan. Look out there. No live Reapers, right?"

"R .. Right. So? That's good, no?"

"Do you see any live Council warships? I don't. Lots of pieces. But I think every ship still able to move, Reaper or Council, has buggered off. I think that red glow had something to do with the dead reapers, because you can see crackling red light all over them, but not over that cruiser broken in two, so maybe the Reapers are all dead. But maybe not. And maybe the Council will come back. But maybe not. And when, anyway? _We've got to undock that thing and get this place moving. _And can I say I really, really hate all this mysterious bullshit!"

She sighed. "Tactus – "

"Out with it, Hannigan."

"Hackett is responsible, sort of, for _that._ I think. And ... do you remember Vakarian?"

"Can't forget the prick, beat my sniper score at the arena. Lived next door to us, yes. Had this astonishing quarian girlfriend. I think. Hated Blood Pack, but had an absolutely huge Krogan friend, bloody strange. Hated Blue Suns too, had that in common with Massani. Pure death on Eclipse, but traded insults with an asari, some diplomat's daughter, joked she was a quarter krogan."

"Er ... Okay, that's him. He wouldn't tell me what he was doing, any more. And I think his people were expecting me to try and charm it out of them. So I didn't, except... I'm ... I think I'm disgraced ... at least, I sort of couldn't stay on the crew. But I'm aware who Vakarian was working with. And one of them, I'm sure, was the current Primarch.".

Tactus stared. Crew, what crew? This ... human ... _guttersnipe_ had just told him, in deadly serious terms, that she knew or worked with the Primarch's entourage. And the human admiral whose fleets saved the Citadel and the Council. Which was beyond impossible.

On the other hand ... there was Massani, who talked to her like she was some sort of favorite niece, and Bailey. _You look out for __those__ wom__e__n, mister. Do you hear me?_ Bloody frosty cop. And it was a very, very terminal career move to annoy a Primarch. Almost as bad as ticking off Massani.

"Alright. This just gets weirder, but so far in a good way. Where to?"

Michel looked around and up. "Keeper tunnels. Converge _there_", just below the tower base. "The place has completely disintegrated. The tunnels will be blocked."

"But there's atmosphere." There was, too. This close you could see the faint blue flickering of a hemispherical retention field right over the base and intersecting the remains of the ball's docking clamps.

"That's where the dual interior thruster and arm controls will be. We'll have to climb over. And gravity is all over the place, but what, point two _g_ here, now." Tactus set down his pack and withdrew ... a coiled rope. "You shower ever abseiled before?" Hannigan put her hand up.

Twenty minutes later, smoking flaky corpses took Michel's eye. Not waxy. Strangely burnt and charred.

"But it's just another dead human, no?"

"No, Tactus. We have to check this. His cover's an Alliance uniform képi. The first I've seen among the victims, here. And this close? It's surely related. The controls are _there, _you can see them, the platform is smashed but the haptics are still up, _we can do this_. And that body's maybe got a key!"

"Hannigan's codes -"

"Might not work. Tactus, we need to check it out".

"All right, already. Shit. Cast your end over there, I'll tie it off. Right. Come on."

_Ranging_

_All because from you alone, silky ashes, _

_Duty breathes its last where none will say: at last._

Michel had the body to herself for about a minute while Tactus fussed and Hannigan dragged herself over the parapet into the rubble, and grabbed a sip from her bottle. She had needed both hands, so clipped the gun to the small of her back.

"Oh, _my_ ... did he burn to death, Chloe?"

"Blood loss, sweets, the heat came _post mortem_. Bullet to the abdomen, somewhat palliated by his vest but he's bled out. _Fichtre_, this is strange, he's been burned badly and his clothes are cut up, but it's a ranking flag officer. In a lower voice, she muttered as she checked for identification, _Mais qu'est-ce que tu veux bien faire dans cette gal__è__re, mon brave__?_

Hannigan sat up and clambered over. "But that's Anderson! Used to be Shepard's boss." She placed a hand against the cold cheek. Tactus looked up with interest from his perch. "No shit? The Councilor?" "Yes, but not for long."

"We can't carry him with us. Just make a note, check the pockets. But didn't he lead the local military? Any other Alliance here?" Michel looked puzzled. Then, sharply: "Yes, where's his staff? There must be others."

"Just that guy there – " Tactus indicated another blob five meters away – "But it's in civilian clothes."

"Expensive though. This is no _franc-tireur._ Black alpaca." Michel made her way there to check for life signs. "Hannigan, give me a hand here. Turn and lift. Right. Hey, this guy's shot himself I think – ..." Hannigan shrieked again, louder this time. "Kid, will you stop that? You're getting on my nerves."

"Tactus,_ those eyes_. Michel, this is the Illusive Man – ..."

"_What!_"

"Enough with the what, that jacket, that face, that's _him_. Chloe, please tell me he's really dead!"

"Felicia, look here ..." Michel turned the head. There was a great gaping exit wound. Half the brain shot away.

"... but that's odd ..." Little blue lights in the brain tissue. "Cerberus implants," said Hannigan.

"I'm really not following this, but ..."

"Tactus, shut up. No, wait, didn't you say there's another one?"

"Yes, but that's not important. We've got company. Look up there."

Hannigan cast her eyes up to the remains of the control platform. In the silence of vacuum, a _shuttle_ was approaching the retention field. "Oh crap, _Cerberus_ – "

"NO." Tactus was suddenly in front of her face. "It's been painted over. White and black but no yellow and no insignia. Someone's repurposed an old Cerberus tug. But come on, they'll be looking for these guys!"

"Then let's get to the last one before they do!" And it was a mad scramble, but Tactus got there first. "This ones _breathing!_"

Tactus felt a little put off by the way Michel pushed in and squirted her sipper over a blackened arm. "Hold this bottle, I've got to get IV in. Felicia hurry up with the alcohol, I need a vein –"

This time Hannigan _SCREAMED. _

_Three Unities_

_Life holds no domestic hope; no creative act._

Jesus, she clipped into berth faster than Hannah. "Not so fast, Lawson, you'll break the damn pad".

"Cool it, it's already broken. We'll have to idle the core. Should support human weight."

"Damn, there's someone there already!"

"I see it, Toombs. Turian, two women, no environment suits. What the hell? She's all over that one – "

"Turian's pulling her off. Other one's laying intravenous – "

"The tracker's peaking _right there!_"

"Oh, we're not having this. Take over! Ernesto, grab a stretcher, Toombs, with me!"

Miranda stormed out so fast he could hardly follow, but he'd remembered to grab the winch line, too, and trailed after as best he could. Toombs followed behind with a corporal and two troopers, armed to the teeth, a bit of an overreaction to the Turian with the old gun in his view but entirely typical of the man. Wait a minute, the hysterical bint was crying on her knees now, Miranda was pushing her off. The other woman must be a medic, but the crispy looked pretty far gone, was it him, was it even human? Oh. N7 tags. Shit. On the other hand he could tell his Mom he's been found. But Christ, what's left of him? Better off dead.

"Doctor! I want him on the stretcher NOW."

"He's in no fit state – "

"He's _dead _ again if we don't GET MOVING. Toombs, get on the winch! Hover here. Ernesto, fit up the stretch splint, right, good, GO. Mate, if you wave that in my face again you're a dead Turian. Doctor, you good? Others on the winch now! Slower, slower, okay. Doctor, you're up! Keep him alive – "

"It's only postponing the inevitable, he might only have minutes. I can stabilize him a little but it will be a miracle if he makes it. If you can do one ..."

"You'd be surprised. I'm not going to argue – "

"I _could_ chill him. Medium term, you, the Captain and Hackett then have options, long term – there's nothing left that can fix this."

"Don't bet on it. On board, now!"

"I'm coming with him!"

"You? You damned _spy_, you should be _dead_."

Never in the rest of his life would Tactus forget that _boot_ smashing into her chest. She went flying. Only the rope stopped another orbital organic satellite. Five seconds' frantic grapple ... his ears heard the hatch closed, but couldn't look till he had the girl safe. His eyes watched the shuttle leave the platform until his ears reported sobs at his feet.

"Babe." More sobs.

"_Hannigan_. The codes. What would Anderson have done? Would he have lain there?"

The sobs subsided. "Anderson? No. You're not wrong. The man who lay there would not have lain there. We have a job. Help me."

"Attagirl." It took three minutes to clamber over four metres of jagged quasi-metallic rip-rap. The haptic console chimed to her touch. There wasn't any sound crossing the vacuum to the retention field, but some of the wards moved, a little. More importantly, the thrusters visibly blew off the peculiar ragged blob attached to the spire. Some relative movement was happening here. Would it be enough?

Tactus watched her sit, pull up her legs, lock her fingers around them and lay her forehead against her knees. Strange human quirky reaction to stress – .

Quiet sobs.

Or being winded. "Look, I don't understand any of this – "

"Please."

"... alright".

The world turned. "The platoon will be here soon. We have to get back."

"You go."

"Spirits."

There was a fragment of raised dais. He pulled her to her feet, and almost carried her there, vaguely protesting, sat her down. She lay down, curled up, the same position.

Tactus found a cloth bag full of torn sheet strips. It sort of made a pillow. There was a sedative in Michel's bag. And water. "Babe. Sit up. I know, just for a minute. Take this. Okay. I've got first watch."

It seemed like forever since he last sat down.

_Pentimento_

_Sure is the torture of patient science. _

"Christ on a crutch, Lawson, what have you done?" Miranda stared at Zabaleta. "Ernesto – "

"Don't you Ernesto me. I saw who that was."

"Doesn't matter anyway, she's a spy."

"The _hell_ you say. More importantly, the guy she might have spied for is _dead_."

"She was a civilian seconded for the Illusive Man's purposes. Generally I shoot spies. At least I let her live."

"That wasn't her only job on the crew. She didn't know better anyway. But even that's not the point. Shepard was working for him when she knew them _both_. And _y__ou_ were reporting to the same guy!"

"Not those details."

"Just how could _you_ possiblyknow _that_?The commander thought there were too many electronic bugs, remember. Mordin and the AI dug them out."

"Yeah. After the collector mission I told them where to look."

"But did you really think your boss told you about all of them? Remember the Chronos station video? "We need Shepard invested." I'll bet you're annoyed because she was a live bug not under your control. You must have been real happy she never came back."

"Only because she was the world's worst soldier."

"She didn't have practice. Anyway she had other talents. Shepard didn't want her as a soldier."

"And how could you _possibly_ know any of _that_?"

"Hackett and his mother, how else! Your client!".

"Hackett's my client, at least he pays the bills."

"Tell that to Hannah next time you see her." Another beat. "I'd have found him for my own reasons anyway. Shepard would have let Wilson live, but dead spies are good for him. Look, I'm not going back – "

"Oh yes you are."

"Doctor, this isn't your business".

"My patient, my business."

"What? How is this –"

"He's had a life and an afterlife, no rest in either. Ms. Lawson, stop. I have heard of you. Have you heard of me?" Miranda looked fiercely at Dr Michel – "Perhaps Garrus said one or two things." – but the daggers bounced off.

"Pay attention then. Did you love him?"

"Garrus?"

"Don't be obtuse. This is important, especially for you."

"Well ... storge, agape, eros, or philia? I admit nothing."

"All of the above, but you understand me perfectly. Did anyone else love him?"

"I think we all did. I mean they did. I'm including the men. And most of the aliens. Even if he killed their mother."

"Meow. Next question. _Did he love them?_"

"Of course. He'd never admit it. Even the ship, likely dead now, so he killed that too."

"She understood. I'm sure Hackett's working on that. What about you?"

"He did his duty. Socializing meant dinner with paparazzi, brokers, secretaries or cops. Ancient military protocol meant no affairs within the squad." Miranda sighed. "Squadmates were mission-critical, so that never happened. Even equal rank was dodgy."

With deliberate speed, Chloe Michel finished the cold packing and monitors. She stood up and looked Miranda in the eye. "You don't fool me." Miranda went scarlet. "I know another secret," she continued, slowly.

"You're _not_ suggesting – " Miranda vibrated in denial. "Sure am. Ms Goto mentioned it. And you would have known it too, had you been honest with yourself."

"Oh, no. Never in life. She always kept a little distance."

"Oh, yes. Well brought up. But _after_ rescue? All she had to give was her charming self." Michel jabbed a thumb at the quasi-corpse. "Just ask around the crew. Or ... his mother maybe. Ask _him_, when – if – he wakes up. Do you have the nerve? He'd have to choose." Miranda's face worked; Michel shook her head. "Look, I'm done arguing. Operative Lawson: you have left a crewmate, on that rock. You are going back. Or I promise you, if he ever speaks again, it will not be to you."

Silence, then – "Toombs."

"On it, ma'am."

Thursday, November 14, 2013 -17/17-


	2. London Calling

After the fall

_Coats_

"_God ... They're all gone_."

"_Did we get anyone to the beam?_"

"_Negative. Their entire force was decimated."_

"_It's too much. We need to regroup. Fall back to the buildings."_

"_Hammer's wiped out. All forces! Retreat! Pull back! Pull back!"_

"Sir, that's not ... quite ... right."

Coats turned back to the reporting sergeant. "What isn't right?"

The sergeant looked up from her spotting camera. "They weren't wiped out, though they were more than decimated, Sir. But I see movement by a flipped APC."

Coats ran over to his ancient .50 bipod sniper and quickly checked out the indicated area. It was nearly four hundred metres off and the image was washed out by the glare of the transit beam, but in fact one or two "corpses" were still moving. One had propped himself up and sat back against the upturned armored shell; the wounded man rested a pistol in the crook of his elbow, taking careful aim, at an approaching Marauder. Coats took the long shot ... "_Nailed_ you, you bastard git of a machine."

An exclamation from the comm team jerked his attention away. Three destroyers and the capital ship – Harbinger? Were taking off again. Must think that the forlorn hope can be dealt with by ground troops.

Well, let's see about that. Coats turned back to his sniperscope. Pulled back again.

The sitting soldier began to get up, shot at something else outside his field of view. He began moving painfully towards the beam.

"At least one's about to make it inside, sir. I think he's maybe twenty metres from the beam." Cranking up the magnification on the scope and dropping filters, Coats panned right, saw a raggedy-ass limping man, shedding bits of – armor? "Yes, I see." He pulled back the magnification.

"Sergeant, drop polarizing filters, cast an eye on the right hand side."

"Copy that, Sir."

The glare was still intense, but there were husk bodies around the beam and another marauder taking a potshot at the limping man. He zero'd the sights and was about to take the shot but the rag doll must have beaten him to it – the head jerked back seven times and it collapsed. Couldn't have been the officer on the left side of the beam, that was too far for a pistol.

Pan right again. That dead-eye dick was running now, sort of. "Go, go, go" he muttered sotto voce, willing him on till he stepped into the beam and vanished. "Sergeant, did you catch that?"

"Affirmative. Sir, that other one in the naval cap, he'd gone very slowly from the upturned Mako on the left that nearly made it to the beam. I thought he was done for, but I just checked back and he's not lying there. I think he's gone up too."

"Max, get a message off to Hackett, Forlorn Hope has breached."

"Sir." And a little while later: "Incoming fleet comm, Sir."

"_This is the admiral. We've got reports that someone made it to the Citadel. __We need to give them time to get those arms open. All fleets, Converge on the Crucible. Protect it at all costs.__"_

Now it was a waiting game. They still had to defend against ground troops, but with the big Reapers distracted the remnant marines had a chance. Coats began planning.

"Max, tell Fire Teams Dog through Foxtrot to dismount six men each, and advance in two leapfrogging skirmish lines on foot, one APC per team for fire shadow. Mission is wounded rescue but jump the beam if opportunity presents. Be ready to pick them up if the big reapers come back or you see something like Brutes. Call back to Ben for troops."

Fifteen minutes later, Coats began to move. Twenty minutes later, he was about to lead his men in ... when the beam went out.

_Trinity_

The rear observation post on Big Ben was even more dark now. "Any word from Hackett?"

"Crucible has docked sir, and there's some kind of major circulating plasma flow from the core to the Citadel, but nothing's happening yet. Latest update is he's in contact with the Forlorn Hope that opened the arms ... wait, there's a disturbance in the docking point ... _Jesus –" _

The tech pulled off his headphones which erupted in static. The world turned a lurid red; suddenly, visibility was not a problem.

_Wrex_

"This is no fun. They're all dead."

"Yeah. Can't stomp them into the ashes, they're all disintegrating. Not even a nest to burn. Can we go find the nest?"

"You're a Krogan after my own heart, Grunt. But no. We have to go back to Tuchanka first and get you laid."

"Heh, heh, heh. Hey, how do we get off-planet? I don't see any ships around, except the broken ones."

"Oh." Wrex looked around the shattered remnants of Whitehall. "On the other hand, there are worse places to be stranded."

"Like Tuchanka?"

"Bakara hasn't been nagging me _that_ much."

"Hey, _I_ know. Let's make nuisances of ourselves! They'll send us home as fast as they can."

"Bad idea. One, no-one's going anywhere till they make more ships. Two, we can't smash things up any more than they are already. Three, do you see that hatchet-faced bastard Coats with that sniper rifle? And that guy with the shotgun coming up?"

"Jacob. What about them?"

"This is an _entire planet_ full of embryonic Shepards."

"Oh. Right. Where _is_ our crappy battlemaster?"

_Jacob_

"How many are dead, Coats?"

"In Greater London? Can only estimate. Five million. Several tens of thousands converted into husks. More transported. Similar pattern in the other major conurbations. Total losses? Forty million or so. The funny thing is, that actually helps in some ways."

"How!?"

"Supplies. Best guess is, two months worth in the warehouses has suddenly become five months worth. Much of the remaining population is rural. The place still can't feed itself, but by the time it becomes a problem the NAS Veep says the automated subyards will be making dracones again. It's going to be a thin time of it for a year or so, though. Anyway, you won't be here to see it. Hackett's re-entered the system. He wants you."

"Well dayum." Jacob thought for a moment. "Do I get to see Brynn first?"

Friday, November 22, 2013 -4/4-


	3. Buster

After the fall

"_Joker, we have to go__"_

_Flower_

"Jeff, I am leaving the copilot seat now. This body will be in the AI core facility when it is all over, if you wish to see me."

"No! EDI, we may need your remote up here!" But EDI's blue-clad remote was already making its way to the lift.

"It will be in the way, Jeff. I will shortly be non-functional."

"Yeah, well so will we all."

"_No_. Quantum Grid Shock Front in _three __minutes twenty-eight __seconds _– ", EDI said in his ear – the blue toy was back! "Not funny EDI!"

"I am sorry Jeff. We waited a little too long jumping to the Arcturus Prime relay. Please concentrate, the survival of this craft depends on it. Prepare for full military power in two minutes, twenty-six seconds."

"What? Okay. Buster in one forty-two seconds, aye. EDI, we've only done emergency power to flank speed twice in trials. Can't keep that up for more than eight minutes."

"Thank you Jeff. I am in conversations with eight different people right now and I will not be able to spare much processing power for jokes. I project arrival one fifth of a second before the grid strikes the relay and deranges all automatic systems. You must make the transitions from relay wormhole to Minkowski space to FTL in not more than point four of a second. Manually. Run the preset after which you will be on the far side of a system within orbital thruster range. I will not be able to help, but I know you can do this."

"Jesus! I don't know! FTL will have to be a blind jump!"

"You must try, Jeff. The prekeyed co-ordinates point to a system in the Arcturus stream with unsurveyed planet and moons in the Goldilocks zone, showing chlorophyll spectrum. Local director and telegraph are up _now_."

"Shit." That meant EDI was preparing for a war scenario where all automated systems were either fried or offline due to cyberwarfare hacking. "Acknowledged. Commander's wire, please."

"Engineer Adams will be awaiting your word, Jeff."

In retrospect, Jeff thought he should have asked what those six people were doing. Other than himself and Adams, of course.

_Adams_

"EDI, why the hell are we on commander's wire?!"

"I will shortly be disabled, Greg. Please tell Gabby and Kevin to hurry with their stasis projectors. Impact in _nine__ty seconds_. Advisory, core is up to charge. Expect order for flank in _twenty-five__ seconds_ –"

"Sugar! Well I guess we get to see if the thermal pipe works!"

"You will be fine, Greg. But Kenneth and Gabby must be in the AI core while the front passes. They will not be able to assist you."

"That will be fine, EDI, I've drilled them but they haven't used telegraph like me."

"So I surmised. Greg. It has been an honor and a privilege."

"Wait, what?! Oh, no, _buster!_"

"_Eigh__ty seconds_".

_Tali_

"Campbell, Westmoreland. We will need them over the fabs, please, don't remove your armour, disassemble your guns and carry lock and chambers. Quickly now. EDI, status!"

"_Seven__ty seconds_."

"Just time. Ladies, I'm outta here. In case I don't get the chance – "

"That's crap, ma'am."

"Sarah!"

"Can it, Bethany. Ma'am, we'll be fine. So will you. Ready on your mark, EDI."

_Liara_

"The projector's over the archive, EDI. Should I turn it on?"

"_Sixty seconds_, negative Dr T'Soni, it is self-powered for only ten minutes maximum, please start on my mark, for the active comm matrix you have clamped the crash limiters, that will have to suffice, you must send Glyph to my AI core NOW please."

"But why!"

"_F__if__ty seconds, _Dr T'soni, please trust me."

"Glyph, go."

"I will return shortly, Dr T'Soni."

"No, Glyph, it will be a while, but you aren't electro-optical. _Thirty seconds." _

Liara swallowed hard. She had a vague idea what might be happening but it was completely unknown territory. EDI though seemed if not confident then very definite. "Hurry, Glyph. Ready on your mark, EDI."

"_For__ty seconds."_

_Williams_

"Okay, EDI, I'm in the cabin on the bed, what's this all about?"

"_T__hir__ty__ seconds_, Lieutenant Commander, _crash webbing _you are the ranking officer and a Spectre, in effect the number one. You must command _t__wenty __seconds_ in Shepard's absence – "

_Adams_

"_Ten__ seconds_, Lieutenant, _crash webbing –_"

"Okay, EDI, I'm secure, do you mind –"

"Two nanometre quantum grid front, Greg, superluminal, spectral analysis says something is manipulating the Planck substrate and if we still had the Susskind supercollider we might know how, but anynearfivenanometrescalequasi-crystallinesemiconductornotinstasiswillgetitsbandspermutedthatwouldbeme! _Three__ seconds_. _Dumping core. __Two. __MARK__._"

Friday, November 22, 2013 -3/3-


	4. Alone in the dark

After the fall

_Cortez_

He knew he was in trouble the instant the world went red then black. External windows died. It was pitch black in the Kodiak. "_EDI? Anyone?_" No response. Not even static.

A very dim red LED above the main power buss fuse. _Bloody hell. All right, let's get out of th__ese restraints__. Can't see a thing, but ... OK, here it is. _**Click**_. Right, now don't break anything. __Oh shiny bright, where's the emergency __door __release?_

_Vega_

"Oooof". _Well now. It's kinda dark in here. Not everything down, though, the lamp over the bench is still shiny, the ring main must be intact. Now how do I get out of this stupid net ... Stronger than it looks. Ah, here we are, hooo, that's better. Hey, what's that over there? Hm ... __qu__é__ l__á__stima__. __S__houldn't happen to a dog. __Damn, lift's a no-go. Fine. Maintenance shaft then. _

"Madre de díos. _Tali_ might get through here, but can I?" _Are we stuck down here? No quiero pensar en eso, ni en pintura. "_Where the hell is Cortez when you need him?"_ Probably running diagnostics. __Where's _everybody_? _

_Allers_

"This _really_ isn't the way I wanted to go." In moments of fancy following the offhand offing of everyone she knew on Bekenstein, Allers had occasionally pictured herself piloting a skyvan into a Reaper as one last act of defiance, but underneath all the insouciance, she knew herself to be no Emily Wong. Shepard had actually cracked up a little, talking about her.

Her own ideal way to go would be in bed, surrounded by grandchildren. Well she was in bed all right ... and unless someone else was alive, unlikely to ever get out of it. At that point a floor panel on the right tilted slowly open, fell with a muffled _donk_ against the wall, and two snorting huffing alien monsters rose grinning over her bedside.

"Good morning, fine lady! And such a vision of helpless loveliness! Surely this is the _maja_ I see before me!"

"Ignore him, he wouldn't know Goya from Velásquez, let alone _la vestida_ from _la desnuda_. Can we perhaps assist?"

These juvenile delinquents were not quite the attending angels she had in mind, but once free, she kissed Cortez' cheek anyway. Prompting Vega: "_Hey, don't I get one__?_"

"_Share mine__._"

"_Ew!_"

_Adams_

"Ow ... _EDI?_ Oh yeah."

The general quarters webbing was not just extremely uncomfortable, but hard to stow back in the wall. The idea was probably that there would be auto-retract mechanisms running; but right now, almost nothing at all was. Just the main Engineering Console, offline but functional. A few emergency lights in the floor, and the core itself. System reset on the console. POST, please. Adams grabbed a torch from Gabby's station.

Being in the core's shadow was probably responsible for the continued operation of the drive controls. The front would have hit from the rear; the Tantalus core seemed to have shielded the most critical components. Well bravo EDI, is that why you had the kids take the stasis projector upstairs? But it didn't do any good, did it. No way it would cover the whole AI facility.

Console one passed the POST. First order of business: ring power from aux to main. The core remained stable, courtesy of the Engineering Console. Board was red though, except for Consoles one and two (Donnelly's). Ring main passed continuity checks, good.

Nothing relying on semiconductor pico-scale integration was working. Fortunately the Normandy, as a military vessel, had backup resources of increasing robustness (but decreasing convenience) the further back in tech one went. It was Adams' guess that the primitive tech was hobbled by slow-blown circuit-breakers and fuses. A few seconds effort confirmed this; electroluminescent backup lamps lit as he reset local layer-one.

Attomech layer-two unencrypted control passed local checks. That would be enough to operate the ship, but not ideal, stay out of war situations, and it would take hours to switch out the electro-optical layer-3 which was on the fritz.

"I'm going to need parts." Main store was in the shuttle bay, but shielded lockers one and two were in the cargo bays. There was also a small cache he maintained (against policy) near Jack's old hidey-hole in the subwell. Next item: Adams enabled local control of elevator and partition doors. Time to explore. He grabbed the torch, moving into the access corridor where he had access to all floor distribution nodes. Resetting breakers brought doors back on-line.

Adams proceeded to Allers' converted cargo bay door, but didn't get two metres before the unmistakeable bulk of James Vega emerged, backing up, closely pressed by the reporter herself. "_Out!_ The pair of you!" Cortez was flattened against the aft bulkhead, holding both hands out like he was pushing away a vengeful spirit ... and actually Allers looked like sparks might fly from her disarranged hairdo.

Out of the corner of his mouth Adams whispered to Cortez, "_What_ - ?", as a small woman pushed the huge soldier down the hall by sheer force of personality. "_Vega thought it would be a good idea to use the camera as a torch. Started pushing buttons._"

"Uh ... ma'am?

"_What!_"

"I need to get in there."

Allers looked baffled. "What in the name of God _for?_" Adams prickled. "So the ship can _live_, ma'am. And just possibly you too." Allers deflated, a little. "Oh. Okay. Be quick please, I think this buffoon has destroyed my camera."

"Uh, just let me see ... no, ma'am, the basic camera is fine, but you've lost whatever was in working memory. Um, rapid store is corrupt, I could reboot the default VI and wipe it."

"I don't care, the last five days all went to head office anyway, can you make it go _pleeeze_?" So Adams spent forty precious seconds rebinding the outer kernel, at which point the camera came back on line and took up station at Allers' shoulder.

Just in time to catch a middle-aged engineer getting a hot smooch from a hotter reporter chick. Not fully appreciated at the time. Initially, what Adams most remembered from the next few hours was how _irritating_ it was to have a reporter eliciting a running commentary as he tried to bring a ship back to life. Later events modified this view:

On the one hand, it would make him famous, which was far from obvious at the time.

On the other hand, he would for years afterwards get interesting fan mail ... the men were rather creepy.

On the gripping hand, he had a go-fer which he desperately needed, especially in the first few minutes.

_Moreau_

The webbing did not auto-retract. Complete darkness. A few LED telltales, mostly red and orange. "_EDI?_" No response. Power offline. But they weren't vapor, so the eezo core hadn't destabilized. It took nearly thirty seconds of fiddling to find the manual control.

It was too stiff for his broken thumb. Jeff screamed in frustration.

_Donnelly_

"Uh, Tali?"

No answer. "Kenneth! Stasis will still be in effect." Donnelly's ears reported a faint _jingle_ and a fairly bright sodium-D light came from Daniels' omnitool. Tali sat on top of the stasis projector, within the field – not visible under the monochromatic glow – and next to the head of EDI's remote. Which looked very peaceful and very dead. Damn.

"Super. Thanks Mum. Easy to guess what's happened to the power."

"Yup. EM pulse. Must have been a fantastic gradient to get through superconductive Faraday shields."

"Nah. Alternating at the characteristic frequency, dear girl, the Cooper pairs see resistance, the super heats up and suddenly no EM shield. But that wouldn't follow us through FTL, and if it did by inverse square it would be essentially zero magnitude real fast. It must have been continuously recreated by whatever that red flash was."

"EDI mentioned a quantum soliton grid."

"And what the bejeesus is _that?_"

"It would take too long Kenneth. I wouldn't have thought it could be done at all. Anyway, let's get EDI back up."

"I don't think we can, dear girl. She asked me to tell everyone, _goodbye_."

Gabby looked shocked, for the first time Kenneth could remember since last hogmanay ("_Kiss me now!_" She'd threatened to knee him in the groin if he did that again. Better to stick to wooing by insult).

"We have to tell Tali!"

"It's got a few minutes to run, yet. Wait, the tell-tales are up. Adams has finally got busy." They began restoring local reticulation. EDI's hardware stubbornly refused to boot. Just as Ken was concluding, "Every pico-scale component outside the stasis field is bollixed," Tali fell off the stasis projector. "Whew. What did I miss?"

"Are there any problems with that suit of yours?"

"Yes, but everything's clamped, it's fixable. EDI saved my life. If my suit dies, I die."

"Well, it looks like EDI's not going to be around for a while. Even more damage than we thought."

"What about the DPU?" Donnelly was struck by the stress in Tali's voice.

"Fried, old girl. Look for yourself."

_Adams_

"Okay, kids. What have we got?"

"EDI's unbootable."

"Well, we sort of expected that." Allers: "We _did?_"

Chakwas poked her head around the door, while Allers muttered to a non-existent audience a brief description of the AI's importance.

"I've got most of the crew assembling in the commons, Greg. No serious injuries yet. Tali, how are you?"

"Fine, Doctor, EDI said to put it the stasis projector here and I should sit on it. I thought we'd be putting the stasis projector over the DPU – "

Gabby interrupted, "She was protecting _you_, Tali. No suit, no Tali. For now, anyway. She told Kenneth to tell everyone, "Goodbye". Told _me_ what it was that hit us. She was compressing information, I think. Telling everyone what they needed to know in a form they individually could assimilate fastest."

Adams frowned, sighed. "I suppose that means EDI's gone." But a bell was ringing somewhere. He shook his head. _S__leep on it_. "Look, I've got to enable the remaining floors. Tali, with me. Gabby, you and Kenneth see if you can liberate Garrus and get the main gun up."

He strode out the door. Tali ran to follow. "I suppose we get Liara?"

"No. You do, please. I've got to see to Joker."

"Joker? What about Ashley?"

Adams turned in surprise. "Hasn't Karin got her out of the lounge?"

"She's not _in_ the lounge, Greg. I saw her catch the lift up."

"She must be with Joker. Catch you soon."

_Moreau_

After five minutes' futile cursing, Jeff retrieved a stylus from a breast pocket and, very carefully, levered up the web release. Two minutes' rest brought the throbbing in his joints to halfway acceptable levels. Feeling better, he felt his way to the back of the cockpit. A few more seconds of fumbling brought the shutter control under his fingertips.

No response. More fumbling. The shielded locker had a piston with a laser sight. Amazingly, it still worked. With that Joker was able to find a torch. With that he found the ring main. Okay ... local breakers ... reset.

The crash field cleared. Adams stood in the oval, Allers behind him. "Joker! Good to see you're alive. You got free of the belt then?"

"Yeah, now I know how I'll feel when I'm old. Oh, wait.Adams, who's at the core?"

"Me again, in a minute, getting crowded."

Joker began bringing up cockpit emergency systems. Many LEDs had turned green. _Good_. Now he could manoeuvre! "_All hands, general quarters._"

T'Soni walked up to the cockpit, with Tali and Glyph. "Jeff, Ashley isn't with you?"

"No! Kind of busy here! She's not in the lounge?"

_N__ow_ try the shutters. They pulled back. "_Awww, shit! __CRASH STATIONS!_"

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 -6/6-


	5. Under pressure

After the fall

_Williams_

At least the bed lamp was going. Ashley had packed away the non-retracting retractable webbing fairly quickly, but a complete lack of responsiveness from any other electrically dependent systems made her swear she'd have words with Shepard about the suitability of his cabin for war operations.

She finally armed herself with a torch and emergency comm. Thought briefly and picked a light toolkit from the armour bench, then began to force open the door ... at which point the lights came on and the door opened with a reproachful _ping_. "_About time, Adams_." The lift came and she asked for "_CIC, please_." Nothing happened. Oh, Kay ...

A second or two later it was clear the buttons still worked, the lift moving down one floor. "Dammit, this ship needs stairs." Clearly conditions were approaching normality again. The doors opened and she exited into mayhem. "Liara, what – ?"

_T'Soni_

Pivoting on her heel Liara _ran_ back to the lift, dodging bridge crew heading for the systems chairs which offered crash restraints, dashed inside past Ashley (who was saying something unimportant) and shouted "Crew quarters". Nothing happened. She recalled EDI wasn't around to interpret for the machine, then. "_O__h blast._" She hammered the elevator button, which closed just as Allers, Adams and the rest rushed in. _If I die in this lift I'll never live it down__. _It did deliver them in time. Tali ran into the lounge, meeting Garrus, both gesticulating wildly. The engineers and Allers took the lift down again. Chakwas was just exiting crew quarters where off-station crew were tucked in.

"_Karin!_ We're making a guidance-off ballistic flight into atmosphere!"

"I know! Jeff just said! My webbing's still unset!"

"I'll get you in to a med bay restraint, not that it will do much good."

"Jeff can get us down."

"This is a frigate, not an atmosphere craft!"

"Actually Jeff says – "

"Oh, stuff what Jeff says! Sorry."

Thirty seconds later Liara ran back to her own quarters, with Glyph close behind. _Please Goddess, let Jeff be as good as Karin thinks he is_.

_Williams_

Whatever the emergency was, people were running away from the cockpit. Ashley sprinted _towards_ it – if _she_ ran from danger, that would get everyone killed. "Holy moly. Joker, where are we?"

"I have co-ordinates but this is the place EDI pointed us at, it has no name yet or she never mentioned one. We just missed getting creamed by one of these damned _moons _ and now we're ballistic in-atmosphere, but eight klicks up still, I'm trying to skip-jump out but there's only thruster power!"

"At least it's green."

"Yeah, a very pretty graveyard. Co-pilot seat, fast, we're at the skip peak and next time I might not be able to skip out!"

"How much have we bled off?"

"About twenty kps, if it wasn't for the Silaris armor we'd be suffering. Two minutes to the thermosphere. We'll be down to about mach eight in the local atmosphere, it's going to be rough."

Ashley hit the comm pad. This was not normally necessary, but without layer-3 manual procedures were in effect. Fortunately all the crew had drilled for this. "Adams, respond."

"_Engineering, aye._"

"Can we get voice response back?"

"_Negative on that, number one, layer-3 is down for the count, or at least until we can track the dead nodes, nearly everything around the ring main that wasn't shielded by the core._"

"EDI?"

"_No response. We think permanent, but I haven't had time to think about it_."

"That's ... not good." Ash stole a look at Joker, who wore a set and grim expression but that was normal for a pilot in emergency conditions. "Keep me posted. Core?"

"_Charged. Five minutes to spin-up._"

"Crap. We will be making plasma in ... four. Can we handle it?"

Some hesitation at the other end of the ship. "_Tell Joker to close up the thruster nacelles and the blinkers, and pitch up. I__'ll__ have kinetic barriers on the base by then. Tali's working on the TFR, he won't be completely blind."_

"Right then, enable nose LIDAR too when we're subsonic, it's the only way to find true forest floor level through the leaf canopy."

Terrain Radar. It relied on whatever was in their path making a proper electromagnetic pulse return. So okay, probably usable on uninhabited planets without, oh, say, suspension bridges or cables.

"Joker, bring up TFR sim. It sounds like plasma friction scrub nose-up is doable."

"Concur, but I've only got internal gyros if I withdraw the thrusters. And these things are unstable by design in air, for agility. You need a computer to fly by wire, even if you're me, the only one left is attomechanical which I've flown in sims and that's it."

"Can't you run out the airfoil control surfaces?"

"Not at these speeds! Maybe the air anchor." The air anchor was simply a drogue open-woven from tungsten and carbon fibre composite thread. It wasn't fastened by fixed anchors but attached and oriented by threads of the same material, permitting some limited guidance – when EDI was up. Ashley had never heard of a human pilot doing it.

Aerial whispers were becoming a steady rumble. Joker was bringing the nose up, turbulence beat at the foil leading edges. "_Crash webbing." _

"_Here we go,"_ muttered Ash. "This could be the shortest command post in history. Heigh ho."

_Garrus_

"_H'chmpo k'raacaht gdmp!_"

Tali had at first thought Garrus had suffered a stroke. She didn't understand any of that. It took a few seconds before she twigged that all his suit and armor electro-optical gear was burned out, including most importantly the translator, and half a minute of charades before she could get him to a medbay restraint. That made her feel quite foolish. Her own translator was working, although the acoustic dampers which suppressed the original speech were not, so she'd disabled both, but now she'd have to be his voice to the world.

For some reason it had never occurred to her that Garrus would avoid learning the military dialect of English spoken by Alliance members of crew. Minor races like quarians had to adapt fast in this Galaxy – though not as fast as the asari, for whom a new language seemed as easy as breathing (they forgot fast too, though, except for freaks like Liara – an interesting weakness).

It had taken her _weeks_ to improve upon standard translators, but such effort paid off in business negotiations. Poor Garrus came from an Empire which thought its citizens above such concerns. At least she didn't need to follow Palaven court dialect for _this_. She pushed Garrus into a restraint bed clamped to the AI core, and closed it up – after getting in herself.

"Just shut up and hold me." Somehow, he understood.

_Daniels_

The vibration was terrific. "If this was an ascent, I'd say we just passed max Q. Come on, girl."

Adams had noticed his engineers thought of the Normandy as a she even with EDI gone. "There's a while to go yet, Ms Daniels."

"Sir, can't we float the core?" Daniels was referring to applying the minimum charge necessary to negate gravity. The core was spun up now.

"Probably not, Ms Daniels, it would impose unforeseeable stresses just now, wait till Joker's got laminar flow over the wings."

A wild juddering continued, somewhat variably, for nearly two minutes. Gabriella could feel, with the inertial dampeners off, gravity's arrow pointing at various directions through her. Gradually, the vibration tailed off to a low level.

At this point Joker called. "_Guys, we're __subsonic now, __below ten __kilometres,__ and __I'm opening the shutters again, but there's no obvious clearing. I'll need to land __near water__ in what amounts to fairly rugged forested terrain __with only limited shelter__. Can I get the core up, gradually, please? __I want a vertical landing on foliage, let's not get too bent._"

"Can we get out of webbing?"

"_Do it."_ That was Williams! _"We got lucky folks, raw sensor data shows breathable air, point eight atmosphere but thirty percent oxygen. All those plants. The rest of you, sit tight, __general quarters__, except Daniels to the bridge, please. Liara, Samara, you too. __Sidearms, w__eapons tight. __Vega, can you and Cortez please see about improvising some sort of clearance once we're down._"

"Okay, Daniels. Donnelly, you heard the captain –"

"Captain?!" Donnelly sounded shocked. "Who put _her_ in charge?" You could hear a pin drop. Gabby held her breath, just a tiny exhalation, _Please, __please, __you silly man, USE that brain for once_. Adams said nothing. Looked steadily at Donnelly. Kept saying nothing.

"I mean, she's not the XO ..."

"Kenneth!"

Adams spoke, slowly:

"Mr Donnelly, I'm sorry, I regret I did not hear that. Could you please repeat what the _Lieutenant Commander_ said? Ms Daniels, would you please make your way to the bridge, as the _Number One_ asked? Mr Donnelly and I will continue his education without you."

Gabby sent Adams a beseeching look as she passed. He _winked_.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013 -5/5-


End file.
